Play date

Today I went and spent a few hours with one of my favorite people. We met by sheer coincident (At this same park) and hit it off right away. Since I moved our playdates have been few and far between but today we managed one! It was SO much fun to visit and let the kids play at the park. I also tried to get some family pictures in but unfortunately none really turned out :) Thanks Brianna for a fun afternoon!



Samuel was taking the pictures and instead of a family picture he focused on me...I like the picture though :)
Failure...

Take two in a couple of days....I am trying to get a family portrait the cheap way :)

Flowers from my boys

My favorite thing was when MD and Hyrum brought me these MD told me "These are flowers! I cut it down for you!" Sweet boys. I will treasure these branches because of the love that inspired the destruction of the bush in front of my house.

Wiped out!

A couple of weeks ago my kids and I braved our cities public pool. For a while every time I drove past it I thought it was a small water park so I was a little excited when I found out it was really our public pool :) The first time we went MD loved it from the beginning. This pool is pretty amazing. It has some huge water slides for the older kids, a lazy river to float down, a nice play area for the kids that squirts them with water and every couple of minutes dumps a huge bucket of water down on everyone. In the main area nothing is deeper then 3 ft. If you want to swim for real you go to a completely separate area. Hyrum however was not as impressed and needed a little more convincing the first time we went. After we were there for an hour and a half he finally started to have fun. This time at the pool however both were ready and excited. Lucky for me my brother Sam is staying with us for a while so he was an enormous help! The pool has a mini park for kids to play at after they swim, so I let them play for a couple of minutes to dry off. By the time we left this time I was wiped out. I need few days rest before I have the energy to do this again.




Samuel taking a break and braving the huge slides



Hyrum was my buddy all day and stayed by my side. MD decided Samuel was more fun than I was :)

Drying off


And this cute kid stayed home with his daddy.

you'd never guess this happy kid was cutting 2 more teeth :)

Stumped

Tonight again for FHE I had one of those moments where my boys completely floored me. Michael asked me to give a spiritual thought and for the life of me I couldn't think of a single thing. Finally after a minute or two when it was getting a little embarrassing that I couldn't think of anything I turned to MD and asked:
"Michael Dunn-Why do we go to church?"
MD answered without skipping a beat
"To go to Sacrament meeting."
I was a little surprised.
"That's right!"
"And why do we go to Sacrament meeting?"
"To take the sacrament!"
Finally thinking I was going to stump him I asked "Well why do we take the sacrament?"
not even missing a beat he said "To repent."
what???
My husband and brother have both been watching this exchange and have noticed how surprised I am. Both are laughing.
"I didn't know you knew that!" I said to MD.
"I did know that!" He said with a giggle. Then my brother speaks up
"He's good!"
MD: "I AM good!!!"
I decided to ask 1 more question
"And who do we take the sacrament for?"
"For Jesus"
At this point MD is laughing right along with Michael and Samuel and is obviously delighted that he surprised me.

Good grief, it just seems like children are smarter these days. And I don't know why I haven't given my children the credit they deserve. From now on they get to give ALL spiritual thoughts :)

Holding out for a Hero!

Last weekend we celebrated Hyrums 3rd birthday. Now in all honesty he turned three the week before, but with all the vacationing and traveling the best I could manage was a small party for him at his grandparents house(which was wonderful). Ever since MD's willy wonka party though Hyrum has been excited for a BIG party. I decided to give in since he saw us do a big party for his brother. Surprisingly everything came together really well. The theme was "Superhero training camp"where we invited some of Hyrums friends to come and train to be superheroes. A HUGE thank you goes out to my Mother-in-law who made everyone of the invited kids a superhero cape that we gave to each kid when they finished their "Training." Another thank you goes out to my brother who played the evil dragon and gave the kids great motivation to train hard so they could defeat him in the end. This party was much easier then MD's and in my opinion-a lot more fun:)

Before the party started we had several of the neighborhood children come and ask if they could be a part of the party. The kids ranged in ages between almost 5 and 10. Not having near enough capes for the extra kids I invited them to help the trainee superheros by being their sidekicks and they could join in the fun and eat the treats but wouldn't be receiving any capes. Surprisingly they were OK with it :)

while we waited for everyone to show up we decorated masks.
Here is Samuel the dragon stealing our "treasure." It was a pinata full of candy. Oh-also Dad Huish :)
The Dragon also got a sidekick
Our superheros in training-And some of their sidekicks
We worked on our coordination by making them balance on a beam (Well a piece of crepe paper taped down) Some superheroes wanted some help. We worked on our strength by catching and popping balloons.
We threw discus (Frisbees)we mastered our combat roles

Raced to the finish line
Crawled through tunnels
And made it back to the dragons lair to defeat him! I hope you notice the water from some of the popped balloons. The superheroes had a LOT of fun defeating the dragon :)
Some of them were determined to make sure he was destroyed even after he had surrendered the treasure. They followed him and pelted him with their water balloons until he "died"
After defeating the dragon they received their capes and were made True Superheroes!
The next thing we had to do was break open the treasure and receive the rewards
Unfortunately we had to call upon the dragon to actually break it open :)
Then of course the cake
And the party ended with the new superheroes going off to save the world..Or just eat watermelon and play outside.

Pure Awesomeness!

Thats right-Hyrum can now ride his bike! Unfortunately he doesn't know how to stop. So instead of hitting his brakes, he launches of the bike when he wants to get off. He is getting pretty banged up, but that isn't stopping him!

This boy cracks me up!

Well most of the time. He is really big into asking me "why?"these days , and it is getting pretty annoying.
I have been enjoying our conversations. The other day I asked him if he was done eating his food. he looked at me and said "Maybe!" I saw he hadn't eaten everything and I asked him to finish his food His response was "Maybe not.."
He loves to tell me about what he sees and hears. He informed me today that Dinosaurs eat fish. I responded that I was sure some of them did eat fish. He said "Yeah-and some ate meat." I then told him that some of them also ate leaves and grass. He looked at me and said "No they eat meat!"
He has a favorite farm animal book that he carries around. When he sees me looking at it he tells me that he is doing his homework.
Anytime he overhears one of us talking about something he had said earlier that day he starts laughing hysterically and then proceeds to repeat that conversation over and over trying to get us to laugh about it again.
He loves to tell us that he is a winner...And then if we do something that he approves of he tells us that we are winners too :)

Texas!

It's been two years since I have been home! As much as I love where we live now, There's a part of me that always misses my home state. We decided to take this trip as our family vacation this year (our first one :) and I was a little surprised by how wonderful it was:) I guess I was worried that this vacation would be more for the kids, but it was a nice break for everyone! The kids were in country heaven and have been a little bothered at Michael and I for bringing them back to Utah ever since. The stars of the show of course were Grandpa and Grandma. MD, a few mornings into our trip, asked where poo-pah was and when we told him that poo-pah was at work he informed us that poo-pah should come home and be a full time Grandpa. My mom stopped being mamaw at the beginning of the trip when my boys decided she was Ma-maw Odie Ross :) My parents did so much for the kids!
Thanks mom and dad for a wonderful trip and for being such wonderful grandparents to your grandchildren.
The pictures are not in any particular order:
We celebrated Hyrums birthday here. In case you are wondering - he is wearing a willy wonka hat :)
My parents let the kids sleep in there bed and so anytime they took naps they asked to sleep in poo-pas bed.
Tractor riding


Seth just chilled
Helping poo-pah in his garden

Getting ready to feed the horses
I love this series of pictures


And of course what better way to end it then with Seth eating his foot :)